Wasps with no appreciation for art have helped us figure out when it was painted.

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Tens of thousands of ancient paintings adorn rock outcrops and shelters in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. At some sites, layers of art on rock walls record a sequence of styles and motifs that changed over thousands of years. In about the middle of that sequence, a style called Gwion depicts people in elaborate clothes and headdresses; the figures are often carrying boomerangs, spears, bags, and ornaments.

"The paintings are like a diary to me and my people," Ian Waina, a member of the Kwini traditional owners of the region, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. But neither the region's traditional owners nor archaeologists are sure exactly how old the Gwion figures are or just where they fit into the timeline relative to other types of rock art in the area. "Everyone wants to find out how old the painting is," Waina told ABC. "They just say this is from the 'old people.' They know the stories, they are keeping those stories, but who is that story from? Is it from our older, older, older people?"

To figure out a more exact age, University of Melbourne archaeologist Damien Finch and his colleagues—including the land's traditional owners, the Kwini and the Balanggarra Aboriginal Corporation—turned to an unlikely source: the remains of mud-wasp nests.

Painted-over insect ruins

Humans aren't alone in leaving archaeological remains behind. Around the Kimberley region, thousands of years of mud dauber wasps have left tiny ruins of their own: long-abandoned mud nests, weathered to flat stumps on the walls of sandstone rock shelters and overhangs. In a few places, the red pigments of the Gwion figures are painted right over the weathered remains of ancient wasp nests.

When mud daubers scoop up material to build their nests, it often includes bits of charcoal from nearby brushfires, which archaeologists can use to radiocarbon date the nest. And Finch and his colleagues are using that as a way to narrow the age of the rock art itself, which is otherwise a challenge to date.

Enlarge/ Ado French, from one of the families of local Traditional Owners, in front of a pair of Gwion rock art figures.

Mark Jones

"For the older styles of Kimberley rock art, there is nothing in the remnant pigment that we can date," Finch told Ars. "The pigment is a red ochre, mostly the iron oxide mineral hematite, or jarosite, so it does not contain any carbon that can be used for radiocarbon dating." And uranium-series dating, which has helped archaeologists date much older rock art elsewhere, works only in limestone caves where flowing water dissolves and deposits calcium carbonate—not in the open sandstone shelters of Kimberley.

Dating a cultural phenomenon

A nest built on top of a painting is probably younger than the painting, but a nest covered over with pigment is probably older than the painting. At one site, ancient people had painted a figure over the remains of one nest, and some time later, wasps built two more mud nests atop the painting. Radiocarbon dating those nests suggested that the painting is 11,300 to 13,000 years old.

The other 20 paintings in the study only had one nest each, so Finch and his colleagues got only a minimum or a maximum age for each painting. But since the researchers wanted to know how long people had used the Gwion style, rather than figure out the precise age of any one painting, combining all those dates could still tell them something useful.

Twelve nests found on top of rock paintings suggested that the paintings were younger than 12,000 years old. Meanwhile, nests beneath five other paintings suggested that those paintings were at least 13,000 to 15,000 years old. Altogether, those dates provide a big-picture look at how long ancient rock artists used the Gwion style before moving on to other styles and motifs. After some additional calculations, which included factors like the statistical reliability of each date, Finch and his colleagues concluded that the heyday of Gwion painting was 11,520 to 12,680 years ago.

There are always more questions

That's considerably younger than archaeologists suggested back in 1997, when a study (also using mud-wasp nests but with a different dating method) found that one Gwion painting was at least 16,400 years old. But there's a limit to how much a single date could say about the history of rock art in the region. "As it was only one minimum age, it told us nothing about how long the Gwion style may have been in vogue," Finch told Ars.

One of the dates in the study also stood out as much older than the rest; a nest on top of a motif dated to 16,600 years old.

"It is possible the motif really is 16,600 years old, but I am not very confident that it is," Finch told Ars. "Radiocarbon dating is based on measurement of the radioactive isotope, carbon 14, and radioactive decay is a random process at the atomic level, so any 14C measurement depends on the statistical behavior of all the 14C atoms present. So it is possible, but very unlikely, that a sample of something that is 12,000 years old, when measured, delivers a result suggesting it is significantly different from 12,000 years old."

Probability calculations suggest that the sample's date was only moderately reliable, but Finch and his colleagues say it's also possible that people in the Kimberley started painting Gwion motifs thousands of years before the style's peak. "Later this year, after I finish my Ph.D., there is something I will try to see if we can confirm the date," Finch told Ars. But ultimately, the questions can only be tackled properly with more dates.

The big picture

The 21 paintings Finch and his colleagues studied are the largest sample of Kimberley rock art ever dated, from an area spanning 100 kilometers (62 miles) of landscape. But they're also just a drop in the bucket compared to the tens of thousands of paintings and galleries around the region, and the sampled paintings cover just a small part of the area where Gwion motifs are found.

Finch and his colleagues have at least another two years of fieldwork ahead of them, and they're seeking permission from two other Aboriginal Corporations to work on their lands.

"The Kimberley rock art sequence is very complex, and there are many thousands of rock art sites, protected by their remoteness, in a region the size of Germany," Finch told Ars. "It is such a rich record of ancient human activity, we could easily work constantly on this for another 10 years and still not have answers to all the questions we have now, much less any new ones."

31 Reader Comments

"Twelve nests found on top of rock paintings suggested that the paintings were younger than 12,000 years old. Meanwhile, nests beneath five other paintings suggested that those paintings were at least 13,000 to 15,000 years old."

I think maybe this is backwards.

Nests on TOP of the paintings suggest the paintings are OLDER than the nests.... since the paintings PRE-DATE the nests.

Nest BELOW the paintings suggest that the paintings are NEWER than the dated nests suggesting that the paintings were AT MOST 13k to 15k years old ... since the paintings POST DATE the nests.

"Twelve nests found on top of rock paintings suggested that the paintings were younger than 12,000 years old. Meanwhile, nests beneath five other paintings suggested that those paintings were at least 13,000 to 15,000 years old."

I think maybe this is backwards.

Nests on TOP of the paintings suggest the paintings are OLDER than the nests.... since the paintings PRE-DATE the nests.

Nest BELOW the paintings suggest that the paintings are NEWER than the dated nests suggesting that the paintings were AT MOST 13k to 15k years old ... since the paintings POST DATE the nests.

Amazing article and beautiful paintings. I’ve never heard of this collection of art and had no idea even the middle period stuff is over 12,000 years old.

That predates even the Sumer civilisation (which I first read about in Snow Crash) which I thought was the oldest at around 6,500 years old. This is twice that age.

Sumerian was an urban culture with a written language, they were pre dated by the Ubaid which was another urban culture without writing which is about 8500 years old. There are a lot of rock art dating to around 12,000 years ago and oldest rock art is from Spain and is 64,000 years old.

Amazing article and beautiful paintings. I’ve never heard of this collection of art and had no idea even the middle period stuff is over 12,000 years old.

That predates even the Sumer civilisation (which I first read about in Snow Crash) which I thought was the oldest at around 6,500 years old. This is twice that age.

Sumerian was an urban culture with a written language, they were pre dated by the Ubaid which was another urban culture without writing which is about 8500 years old. There are a lot of rock art dating to around 12,000 years ago and oldest rock art is from Spain and is 64,000 years old.

And of course artwork is generally not designed to last thousands of years, let a lone tens of thousands, so to find works as old as these is pretty special. There was a pebble found in a cave in Africa in a layer dated to well before homo sapiens that had a happy face by happenstance (ie not intentionally carved that way) . What was unusual about this find is that some agent (australopithicus?) picked this stone up and carried it into the cave dozens or more miles away from where the stone existed naturally. It would fit in the category of "found object art" in modern parlance. But it clearly shows the ability of earlier hominins to assign meaning to symbolic objects. Examples of human art predating these (the rock and cave art from the article) will likely continue to be found at ever increasing age but ever fewer examples.

Amazing article and beautiful paintings. I’ve never heard of this collection of art and had no idea even the middle period stuff is over 12,000 years old.

That predates even the Sumer civilisation (which I first read about in Snow Crash) which I thought was the oldest at around 6,500 years old. This is twice that age.

Sumer is generally regarded as the first modern civilization as we know it today, with extensive government, agriculture, etc. They were a cohesive society that can generally be regarded as a single group through many lenses and analysis.

It doesn't seem like the authors actually refer to the practitioners of this art style as a civilization though, simply that they all shared this common art. Lots of collections of hominids existed pre-dating Sumer, until eventually coalescing into Sumer and other civilizations.

The oldest cave paintings date tens of thousands of years older than these or Sumer, to more than 44000 years ago in France, and potentially older in some places, although that seems up for dispute.

Amazing article and beautiful paintings. I’ve never heard of this collection of art and had no idea even the middle period stuff is over 12,000 years old.

That predates even the Sumer civilisation (which I first read about in Snow Crash) which I thought was the oldest at around 6,500 years old. This is twice that age.

Sumer is generally regarded as the first modern civilization as we know it today, with extensive government, agriculture, etc. They were a cohesive society that can generally be regarded as a single group through many lenses and analysis.

It doesn't seem like the authors actually refer to the practitioners of this art style as a civilization though, simply that they all shared this common art. Lots of collections of hominids existed pre-dating Sumer, until eventually coalescing into Sumer and other civilizations.

The oldest cave paintings date tens of thousands of years older than these or Sumer, to more than 44000 years ago in France, and potentially older in some places, although that seems up for dispute.

Australian Aboriginal culture had cultivational practices for plants, animals, and even whole ecosystems, and these have been dated back for thousands of years. They also had graphic conventions for conveying complex information, as illustrated in the article above.

There's reasonable dispute from scholars about whether the kind of organisation found in the Fertile Crescent ten thousand years ago is appropriate for describing all complex human organisation. If we define civilization based on the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia, we'll only consider civilization to be things that closely resemble those regions.

Amazing article and beautiful paintings. I’ve never heard of this collection of art and had no idea even the middle period stuff is over 12,000 years old.

That predates even the Sumer civilisation (which I first read about in Snow Crash) which I thought was the oldest at around 6,500 years old. This is twice that age.

Sumer is generally regarded as the first modern civilization as we know it today, with extensive government, agriculture, etc. They were a cohesive society that can generally be regarded as a single group through many lenses and analysis.

It doesn't seem like the authors actually refer to the practitioners of this art style as a civilization though, simply that they all shared this common art. Lots of collections of hominids existed pre-dating Sumer, until eventually coalescing into Sumer and other civilizations.

The oldest cave paintings date tens of thousands of years older than these or Sumer, to more than 44000 years ago in France, and potentially older in some places, although that seems up for dispute.

Australian Aboriginal culture had cultivational practices for plants, animals, and even whole ecosystems, and these have been dated back for thousands of years. They also had graphic conventions for conveying complex information, as illustrated in the article above.

There's reasonable dispute from scholars about whether the kind of organisation found in the Fertile Crescent ten thousand years ago is appropriate for describing all complex human organisation. If we define civilization based on the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia, we'll only consider civilization to be things that closely resemble those regions.

Middle Eastern societies are important because they are the start of the modern world. Those societies are where agriculture, writing and metal tools all appeared first. The food we eat, the alphabet we write in, the architecture of buildings and the way we mark the passing of time, all have their roots in the fertile crescent. Pretending that doesn't matter is foolish.

Amazing article and beautiful paintings. I’ve never heard of this collection of art and had no idea even the middle period stuff is over 12,000 years old.

That predates even the Sumer civilisation (which I first read about in Snow Crash) which I thought was the oldest at around 6,500 years old. This is twice that age.

Sumer is generally regarded as the first modern civilization as we know it today, with extensive government, agriculture, etc. They were a cohesive society that can generally be regarded as a single group through many lenses and analysis.

It doesn't seem like the authors actually refer to the practitioners of this art style as a civilization though, simply that they all shared this common art. Lots of collections of hominids existed pre-dating Sumer, until eventually coalescing into Sumer and other civilizations.

The oldest cave paintings date tens of thousands of years older than these or Sumer, to more than 44000 years ago in France, and potentially older in some places, although that seems up for dispute.

Australian Aboriginal culture had cultivational practices for plants, animals, and even whole ecosystems, and these have been dated back for thousands of years. They also had graphic conventions for conveying complex information, as illustrated in the article above.

There's reasonable dispute from scholars about whether the kind of organisation found in the Fertile Crescent ten thousand years ago is appropriate for describing all complex human organisation. If we define civilization based on the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia, we'll only consider civilization to be things that closely resemble those regions.

Middle Eastern societies are important because they are the start of the modern world. Those societies are where agriculture, writing and metal tools all appeared first. The food we eat, the alphabet we write in, the architecture of buildings and the way we mark the passing of time, all have their roots in the fertile crescent. Pretending that doesn't matter is foolish.

You sure slew that straw man!

There was no claim that the Middle East doesn't matter. The claim was that other civilizations matter too, and some of them don't look like Middle Eastern societies.

Amazing article and beautiful paintings. I’ve never heard of this collection of art and had no idea even the middle period stuff is over 12,000 years old.

That predates even the Sumer civilisation (which I first read about in Snow Crash) which I thought was the oldest at around 6,500 years old. This is twice that age.

Sumer is generally regarded as the first modern civilization as we know it today, with extensive government, agriculture, etc. They were a cohesive society that can generally be regarded as a single group through many lenses and analysis.

It doesn't seem like the authors actually refer to the practitioners of this art style as a civilization though, simply that they all shared this common art. Lots of collections of hominids existed pre-dating Sumer, until eventually coalescing into Sumer and other civilizations.

The oldest cave paintings date tens of thousands of years older than these or Sumer, to more than 44000 years ago in France, and potentially older in some places, although that seems up for dispute.

Australian Aboriginal culture had cultivational practices for plants, animals, and even whole ecosystems, and these have been dated back for thousands of years. They also had graphic conventions for conveying complex information, as illustrated in the article above.

There's reasonable dispute from scholars about whether the kind of organisation found in the Fertile Crescent ten thousand years ago is appropriate for describing all complex human organisation. If we define civilization based on the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia, we'll only consider civilization to be things that closely resemble those regions.

Middle Eastern societies are important because they are the start of the modern world. Those societies are where agriculture, writing and metal tools all appeared first. The food we eat, the alphabet we write in, the architecture of buildings and the way we mark the passing of time, all have their roots in the fertile crescent. Pretending that doesn't matter is foolish.

You sure slew that straw man!

There was no claim that the Middle East doesn't matter. The claim was that other civilizations matter too, and some of them don't look like Middle Eastern societies.

While that is true, it needs to be clarified that native Australian populations didn't develop a civilization.

Quote:

A civilization or civilisation is any complex society characterized by urban development, social stratification imposed by a cultural elite, symbolic systems of communication (for example, writing systems), and a perceived separation from and domination over the natural environment.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]

Certainly complex societies, but not civilization, which is a specific form of a complex society featuring the presence of cities ("civitas" being Latin for "city.") Urbanization is one of the critical hallmarks inherent in the definition of the term. Take that away and you're not talking about civilization anymore. The issue I take with georgedarroch's post is that it seems to argue that "civilization" generally is just some kind of "sufficiently complex organization," and that there is some debate about whether pinning the definition to the urbanized forms is appropriate. That's not the case. Civilization is just one variety of complex society, but not the only kind.

Urbanization is one of the critical hallmarks inherent in the definition of the term. Take that away and you're not talking about civilization anymore.

You argument boils down to: "It's a critical hallmark of the definition because the definition names it as a critical hallmark." That's obviously a circular argument.

The questioning is whether we should perhaps expand the definition of "civilization" to form a more useful categorization of human experience. You argue we shouldn't, and we should use a different term to discuss that wider concept.

The questioning is whether we should perhaps expand the definition of "civilization" to form a more useful categorization of human experience.

You're presuming the current definition is too narrow and thus less useful. Broadening the current definition doesn't make it more useful, it would make it less useful. As is, it's specific and meaningful and covers definite, distinct forms of social organization. What do you gain by broadening it to include things that aren't under it right now?

The questioning is whether we should perhaps expand the definition of "civilization" to form a more useful categorization of human experience.

You're presuming the current definition is too narrow and thus less useful. Broadening the current definition doesn't make it more useful, it would make it less useful. As is, it's specific and meaningful and covers definite, distinct forms of social organization. What do you gain by broadening it to include things that aren't under it right now?

Neither of us is a researcher in the field that is having this conversation.

You and Albino_Boo claim affirmatively that those in the field who are arguing in favour of widening the concept this are wrong to do so.

I’m presuming that if there’s a debate in that field, there’s likely good reason for it.

It’s pretty normal in every field for debates to come up and redefine the key terms, as we discover that what we thought was important isn’t necessarily the critical feature that leads to the conclusions we made from that classification.

The questioning is whether we should perhaps expand the definition of "civilization" to form a more useful categorization of human experience.

You're presuming the current definition is too narrow and thus less useful. Broadening the current definition doesn't make it more useful, it would make it less useful. As is, it's specific and meaningful and covers definite, distinct forms of social organization. What do you gain by broadening it to include things that aren't under it right now?

Neither of us is a researcher in the field that is having this conversation.

You and Albino_Boo claim affirmatively that those in the field who are arguing in favour of widening the concept this are wrong to do so.

I’m presuming that if there’s a debate in that field, there’s likely good reason for it.

Amazing article and beautiful paintings. I’ve never heard of this collection of art and had no idea even the middle period stuff is over 12,000 years old.

That predates even the Sumer civilisation (which I first read about in Snow Crash) which I thought was the oldest at around 6,500 years old. This is twice that age.

Sumer is generally regarded as the first modern civilization as we know it today, with extensive government, agriculture, etc. They were a cohesive society that can generally be regarded as a single group through many lenses and analysis.

It doesn't seem like the authors actually refer to the practitioners of this art style as a civilization though, simply that they all shared this common art. Lots of collections of hominids existed pre-dating Sumer, until eventually coalescing into Sumer and other civilizations.

The oldest cave paintings date tens of thousands of years older than these or Sumer, to more than 44000 years ago in France, and potentially older in some places, although that seems up for dispute.

Australian Aboriginal culture had cultivational practices for plants, animals, and even whole ecosystems, and these have been dated back for thousands of years. They also had graphic conventions for conveying complex information, as illustrated in the article above.

There's reasonable dispute from scholars about whether the kind of organisation found in the Fertile Crescent ten thousand years ago is appropriate for describing all complex human organisation. If we define civilization based on the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia, we'll only consider civilization to be things that closely resemble those regions.

Middle Eastern societies are important because they are the start of the modern world. Those societies are where agriculture, writing and metal tools all appeared first. The food we eat, the alphabet we write in, the architecture of buildings and the way we mark the passing of time, all have their roots in the fertile crescent. Pretending that doesn't matter is foolish.

You sure slew that straw man!

There was no claim that the Middle East doesn't matter. The claim was that other civilizations matter too, and some of them don't look like Middle Eastern societies.

While that is true, it needs to be clarified that native Australian populations didn't develop a civilization.

Quote:

A civilization or civilisation is any complex society characterized by urban development, social stratification imposed by a cultural elite, symbolic systems of communication (for example, writing systems), and a perceived separation from and domination over the natural environment.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]

Certainly complex societies, but not civilization, which is a specific form of a complex society featuring the presence of cities ("civitas" being Latin for "city.") Urbanization is one of the critical hallmarks inherent in the definition of the term. Take that away and you're not talking about civilization anymore. The issue I take with georgedarroch's post is that it seems to argue that "civilization" generally is just some kind of "sufficiently complex organization," and that there is some debate about whether pinning the definition to the urbanized forms is appropriate. That's not the case. Civilization is just one variety of complex society, but not the only kind.

You are technically correct, bestkindofcorrect.jpg, but the conflation you describe of civilisation with urbanisation is increasingly problematic because as originally intended (not by you) it carries a wagonload of history and value judgements such as defining non-urbanised societies as uncivilised and therefore barbaric which is kissing cousins with inferior and other unsavoury lines of thought and philosophies.

We saw some of these paintings and the wasps' nest back in 1997 while staying at El Questro in the Kimberley. We were told that a some of the nests on top of the art work had been dated to about 9000 BP meaning that the paintings had to be older than that. They were painted high on the cliff wall under an overhang along the Chamberlain River. Our guides took us there in little electrically powered boats. They brought car batteries to power them. Since there had been a radiocarbon dating, researchers were aware of these paintings among others in the region. It's good to see more recent studies.

You are technically correct, bestkindofcorrect.jpg, but the conflation you describe of civilisation with urbanisation is increasingly problematic because as originally intended (not by you) it carries a wagonload of history and value judgements such as defining non-urbanised societies as uncivilised and therefore barbaric which is kissing cousins with inferior and other unsavoury lines of thought and philosophies.

Similar baggage was loaded onto "evolution" forever but we don't abandon good, useful concepts just because humans gonna human.

I was watching a cooking show on Netflix and in it there was a part about Australia. They visited and area where the aboriginal people of Australia had been meeting for 50,000 years. It was a rock formation in the shape of a giant table. Underneath it was the meeting place.

I find it interesting unlike other old place like 12,000 years-old Göbekli Tepe or Jericho also about 12,000 years-old that the Australia site still has the same culture.

Amazing article and beautiful paintings. I’ve never heard of this collection of art and had no idea even the middle period stuff is over 12,000 years old.

That predates even the Sumer civilisation (which I first read about in Snow Crash) which I thought was the oldest at around 6,500 years old. This is twice that age.

Sumerian was an urban culture with a written language, they were pre dated by the Ubaid which was another urban culture without writing which is about 8500 years old. There are a lot of rock art dating to around 12,000 years ago and oldest rock art is from Spain and is 64,000 years old.

There is also cave art on Sulawesi uranium isotope dated to the same era, according to the most recent edition of Scientific American.